Timeline: 50 Years of Hard Drives

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By Rex Farrance

PCWorld| PT

Over the past five decades, hard drives have come a long way. Travel through time with us as we chronicle 50 milestones in hard-drive development--from product firsts to new technologies, and everything in between.

Photograph: Courtesy of Hitachi GST

1956: IBM ships the first hard drive in the RAMAC 305 system. The drive holds 5MB of data at $10,000 a megabyte. The system is as big as two refrigerators and uses 50 24-inch platters. (For the full story and interviews with key players, read "The Hard Drive Turns 50.")

1983: Rodime releases the first 3.5-inch hard drive; the RO352 includes two platters and stores 10MB.

1984: Western Digital makes the first Winchester hard drive controller card for the IBM PC/AT--and sets an industry standard.

1985: Control Data, Compaq Computer, and Western Digital collaborate to develop the 40-pin IDE interface. IDE stands for Intelligent Drive Electronics, more commonly known as Integrated Drive Electronics.

1985: Imprimis integrates the first hard drive controller into a drive.

1985: Quantum introduces the Plus Hardcard, which allows the addition of a hard drive without an available bay or a separate controller card.

1985: Western Digital produces the first ESDI (Enhanced Small Device Interface) controller board, which allows larger capacity and faster hard drives to be used in PCs.

1986: The official SCSI spec is released; Apple Computer's Mac Plus is one of the first computers to use it.

1988: Prairie Tek releases the 220, the first 2.5-inch hard drive designed for the burgeoning notebook computer market; it uses two platters to store 20MB.

1988: Connor introduces the first 1-inch-high 3.5-inch hard drive, which is still the common form factor. Before this, hard drives were either full height or half-height.

1988: Western Digital buys the disk-drive assets of Tandon Corporation with an eye to manufacturing IDE drives.

1991: IBM introduces the 0663 Corsair, the first disk drive with thin film magnetoresistive (MR) heads. It has eight 3.5-inch platters and stores 1GB. (The MR head was first introduced on an IBM tape drive in 1984.)

2002: Among its many 2002 technology accomplishments, Seagate successfully demos Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording. HAMR records magnetically using laser-thermal assistance and ultimately aims to increase areal density by more than 100 times over 2002 levels.

2003: Western Digital introduces the first 10,000-rpm SATA hard drive, the 37GB Raptor, which is designed for the enterprise, but which gamers quickly learn is a hot desktop performer in dual-drive RAID setups.

2004: The first 0.85-inch hard drive, Toshiba's MK2001MTN, debuts. It stores 2GB on a single platter.

Photograph: Courtesy of Toshiba Storage Device Division

2005: Toshiba introduces its MK4007 GAL, which stores 40GB on one 1.8-inch platter, fielding the first hard drive using perpendicular magnetic recording.

2006: Seagate completes the acquisition of Maxtor, further narrowing the field of hard drive manufacturers.

Photograph: Courtesy of Seagate Technology

2006: Seagate's Momentus 5400.3 notebook hard drive is the first 2.5-inch model to use perpendicular magnetic recording, which boosts its capacity up to 160GB.

2006: Seagate releases the Barracuda 7200.10, at 750GB the largest hard drive to date.

Photograph: Courtesy of Western Digital

2006: Western Digital launches its 10,000-rpm Raptor X SATA hard drive, boosting its capacity to 150GB and placing a flashy transparent window that allows specially designed computer cases to showcase its inner workings.

2006: Cornice and Seagate each announce a 1-inch hard drive that holds 12GB. The drives are slated to ship in the third quarter of 2006.

Rex Farrance is PC World's senior technical editor.

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